


There Are More Ways to Tame the Beast

by cher



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Blood Magic, Consent Issues, Knifeplay, M/M, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 14:58:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10310801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: The Riskbreakers all have madness snapping at their heels. It is the shape of each Agent’s demons that is the thing to learn.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rose Argent (roseargent)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/gifts).



> Content warnings: If you would like a spoilery warning for what the consent issues in this fic entail, skip to the end notes.

In the dream, Ashley is naked. He can’t see his lover, but he can feel him. 

The claws on his cock are the kindest thing he has ever felt. 

*

Ashley lives his post-Tia half-life subject to the whims of the VKP, and the places he goes are often strange. Nothing, nowhere, could ever be so strange and unsettling and inescapably compelling as the ancient, broken city of Leá Monde. 

The noises, always the noises, the shrieks and groans and moans of dying things that will never die. The flutter and sparkle of snowflies, beautiful and strange until he learned what they were, souls on the wind, and now their loveliness fills him with horror. There is something about the idea of being adrift forever in this place that is even worse than the shambling half-death of the Cold Ones. 

And there is Sydney, who stirs him. His enemy, but such an enemy. Say rather, opponent. Sydney Losstarot is nothing like the brutish warmongers or the scheming, cold men in starched robes who are Ashley’s more usual mark. No, Sydney has called himself _hart_ , Sydney has looked into Ashley’s soul, set his claws into Ashley’s chest until his blood ran red, and then accepted the hunt. Sydney is the most glorious quarry Ashley has ever pursued. He has never _wanted_ a mission so much, never felt so alive, even here among the dead and the never-dying. His battered soul sings for Sydney and the gleaming, bladed wonder of him. 

In an ordinary soldier the snarl and catch of a fixation like this would be unwelcome. In a Riskbreaker, anything that will assist a mission is a boon, and leftover pieces of damaged Agent are a concern for later. The VKP is full of leftover pieces. Thus far, Ashley has been one of the only slightly singed, but this mission will ruin him. Sydney will ruin him. He knows it, and cannot care. 

The Riskbreakers all have madness snapping at their heels. It is the shape of each Agent’s demons that is the thing to learn. 

*

He wakes in his bedroll and his cock is wet and his sides are heaving and his belly is sticky with his release. There is a familiar ghostly chime of silver on silver in his ears and he’d be ashamed of the frisson it gives him, but after so many nights of this it seems almost a comfort. 

He doesn’t know what is real, what is this place, and what is his own mind’s doing. 

He knows he has to find Sydney. 

He rises, and takes up his sword. 

*

After it all, he walks away from the Duke’s residence in a daze, wearing others’ faces until he can get away. The Dark is a fire burning under his skin, fighting him, goading him on. 

*

He has sequestered himself in a cabin remote enough to invite few chance comers, when Sydney finds him at last. 

Ashley knows who it is immediately, the chime of Sydney’s claws a distinctive sound over the sound of the rain, even if the Dark had not been in a frenzy at his approach all morning. Did he call him? He, or the Dark? Is he alive still, alive again? Somewhere between an incomplete death and the parting regard of the Dark for its last bearer? It doesn't matter, he supposes; he needs Sydney. He is lost and the Dark is lost with him, and he cannot make his own peace. 

“Losstarot,” he says, surprised at the sound of his own voice. He hasn’t spoken in weeks. He lets Sydney in, dry despite the weather. The man hasn’t changed; looks exactly as he remembers him, save for the naked back - somehow whole, but the missing Rood seems an obscenity. The damnable leather pants that must be held up by magic. The shining silver claws. The graceful silver limbs. Sydney Losstarot is everything he remembers, bright and beautiful, and Ashley is so very lost. 

Sydney looks at him, seeing, it seems, more than a dim but tidy cabin and a battered ex-Riskbreaker. “Riot. What a mess you’ve made. You and the Dark are going to destroy one another if you keep on like this. You’ll need to do as I say.” 

Ashley nods. He will. He doesn't know what else to do. 

“I need to see it,” says Sydney, and so he takes off his garments. A military man has no business feeling shy about his body, but the avarice in Sydney’s expression as he looks at the Rood makes him shiver. He’d give it back if he could, set those sharp lines back into the skin they belong to. Perhaps that is some of the problem, some of the reason he and the Dark cannot settle to one another. 

“Riot,” Sydney breathes, lilting, mocking, always with that cruel half-smile. It seems he can tell much from looking upon the Blood-Sin. “You cannot master the Dark. It will have no master. You may only make yourself known to it; bargain and entreat and guide. You cannot command; you must surrender. Let me show you. Lie back.” 

Sydney steps toward him, something of the hunter in his expression. It is the opposite of a comfort, but Ashley needs his help and he would be doubly a fool not to take it. He sits on his sleeping pallet and falls back on his elbows, the straw ticking softer at least than the boards of the floor. 

“Feel, Riot, feel, the way the Dark shivers under your skin. I remember what it was like; you must be bursting from yourself by now. Feel how it wants to be used, wants to use you. The greatness you could command together. But you fight it, deny it. As well try to fight the ocean. There is no way but the Dark’s way. You may find its ways amenable to yours, if you will only offer it your acceptance.”

Ashley shivers and shakes under the onslaught of the magic, the Dark twisting inside him and turning his vision pale. He cannot go on this way; he will end by unleashing cataclysm. “Then how, Sydney. How. I have bargained and I have pleaded and it rages still. I lack your silver tongue; it wants a mage for a Rood Bearer, not a solider.”

“You _are_ a mage, you blind fool. If only you would put down your sword, you would know it. You are a natural mage of the kind rarer than the blood of sprites. Your command makes me ache for you; I would have you master me.”

Ashley’s cock surges painfully, shamefully. He cannot prevent himself from arching his back, a low noise of want escaping him all unwilling. It could be the Dark who moans for it; it could be himself. He is mortified, but Sydney smiles down at him, a cat with the cream, the Dark with a plaything. 

“Oh, Riskbreaker. How I’m going to enjoy you. And I will. The surest way to offer the Dark your parlay is this surrender. Let me take you inside, let your seed spend within me, let the Dark out. It knows me. It wants _you_ to know me.”

If surrender is what it will take to win back at least some dominion in his own body, Ashley will take it. If Sydney is playing games, well, bedding him is no hardship at all. Sydney has already ruined him; so long as the world survives them and the Dark, Ashley considers his job will have been well done. He can have this, whatever it is that “this” turns out to be. 

His cock aches with lust. Sydney sees his submission immediately, and in his sharp face Ashley reads triumph, relief, covetousness and an answering lust. And perhaps, though he may imagine it, perhaps a small hint of tenderness. 

The odd warmth of Sydney’s claws on his cheek is soothing. Not once in their dealings has he laid Ashley’s skin open - not without meaning to - and so it is possible to trust him, even, perhaps, glory in the strangeness of those razored hands on his body. 

“Riot,” Sydney purrs at him, magnanimous in victory, one silver palm pressing down against Ashley’s chest as he settles on the sleeping pallet. “The Dark needs your submission, now. Don’t fight it. Don’t fight me. Listen to what it wants. This is how you will reach an accord.”

And he draws his four clawed fingers slowly down Ashley’s chest, lines of cold before his blood wells up red. The Dark surges, and Ashley surges with it, plunged suddenly backward into himself. The pain is minor, nothing. It is the trust the Dark wants, his willingness to lie still and allow himself to be marked, to be hurt. He will give it. 

Sydney smiles, cruel and beautiful, and yet not cruel exactly. He extends one long claw to Ashley’s lips, and he opens for it, knowing somehow what to do. He closes his lips lightly over the blade, sucks, feels his tongue nicked open and red paint his lips. It seems important, and he wonders, dimly, behind the blinding lust and the blinding Dark, if Sydney is working a ritual. It is an idle thought and it slips quickly away. It doesn’t matter. 

Sydney bends to lick at his bloody mouth, his tongue hot on his lips. Ashley, or the Dark, opens his mouth, reaching to pull Sydney down to him even as he chases the taste of iron on Sydney’s lips. He’s not surprised when he finds Sydney’s teeth sharper than his own, and _oh_ , laying here under this eldritch wonder of a man Ashley wants to bare his throat, follow Sydney for the rest of his days, wear the marks of his teeth and his claws and his barbed, silver tongue. 

Sydney laughs into his mouth. He draws back to look at Ashley, who must surely be a sight. “Oh, Riskbreaker. You are delicious beyond all possibility. The word will eat from our hands.”

He doesn’t care. He wants more of Sydney’s sharpness, more of his claim. His hands, or the Dark, reach for those maddening laces on Sydney’s leather pants. They do nothing but tangle, frustrating him, until he listens to the Dark and twists its magic just so, and suddenly Sydney is naked. “There,” he purrs, sounding immensely pleased. “You listened. See how it can be.”

Ashley is greedy for him, half-mad with it. He wants to touch all of Sydney, every sharp edge, learn all of his secrets. Sydney is made of secrets. 

He reaches to touch Sydney’s shining thighs, caressing the secrets and the silver. He loves Sydney’s gleaming limbs, so beautifully articulated, so perfectly himself. They make him heavier than he should be as he settles astride Ashley, and there is something about the weight of him that sends Ashley’s thoughts scattering. He wants this surrender. The frisson of danger, of never quite being able to trust that he knows Sydney’s game, makes it all the sweeter. Sydney accused him once of naivety, but if it brings him here, under this glory of a man, then he will take it. 

The cuts on his chest sting as his skin pricks with sweat, and Sydney bends to lick at them. The sensation of his warm tongue on the fiery cuts is electrifying, and the Dark writhes in pleasure. “Please,” he begs, and he feels Sydney smile against him. 

“That’s it, Riskbreaker,” he purrs. “Laying back for me. Now if you want me, open me.” He sits up, Ashley’s blood on his lips, and grinds himself down on Ashley’s aching cock. It is devastating. His head tips back and he cannot think, except for the longing to push inside Sydney. Sydney keeps moving against him until he is ready to weep with frustration, and the Dark surges forward, past him somehow, and Sydney makes a noise that Ashley cannot describe. 

It’s a good noise, a _yes_ noise, and Ashley jackknifes up - can’t stop himself - and pulls Sydney against him. One of his hands tangles itself in the fine blond hair, and he tastes his blood on Sydney’s tongue. 

Sydney smiles against him, his claws pricking at Ashley’s shoulders. “Lay back,” he says again, and Ashley does, acquiescing easily. He cannot prevent his hands from bracketing Sydney’s slim hips, helping Sydney raise up above him. “Hold yourself steady,” Sydney murmurs to him. 

There are some things, Ashley supposes, as he wraps a hand around his own cock, that Sydney’s glorious claws make difficult. And then his thoughts tangle as Sydney lowers himself down. 

Sinking inside Sydney feels like a fever dream. He can feel every inch of his skin, and the Dark is making his vision shine, and Sydney is everywhere. The pleasure of it is beyond anything he has ever felt, and he knows he is crying out as he snaps his hips up to meet Sydney’s weight. 

He never wants this to end. He could be here forever, cock squeezed tight inside Sydney’s just-slightly-too-cool body, the Blood-Sin burning on his back, Sydney’s sharp teeth set into his throat. It can’t last; he is too on edge, has wanted Sydney for too long. At the moment of his release he gives it up, everything he’s fought against in the months since Leá Monde, everything that remained of the VKP’s Agent. All he wants is to be here under Sydney Losstarot, giving him everything. 

The bliss is indescribable. He is lost in it. It pulses around him like a heartbeat, greying his vision and pushing him outside of himself. He can’t care, the feeling is too wonderful. He sees himself, head thrown back as Sydney rides him, and his own eyes are washed black. And then Sydney throws his head back as well, cock pulsing, a harsh scream on his lips. All along the obscenely blank skin of Sydney’s back, silvery lines appear. The Blood-Sin rewrites itself in silvered scar tissue and Sydney’s cry turns triumphant. 

Ashley crashes back into himself, his body humming with the force of his release. Sydney seems to glow above him, beautiful in his wholeness. He catches his breath and sits up, lifting Sydney off of him, turning him to see the renewed Rood on his back. Sydney, breathing hard, lets him. He runs his fingers over the raised silver lines, admiring. It’s perfect. A scarred Rood, all Sydney’s own.

“Is it gone from me, now?” he asks, thinking that the Dark seems quiescent but that he doesn’t feel entirely alone in his head either. 

Sydney looks over his shoulder at him, his grey eyes alight with joy and a hint of slyness. ::It’s not gone,:: he says, but his lips don’t move. 

Ashley frowns, looking around. His little cabin retains its colour; he doesn’t think he’s fallen into one of Sydney’s heart-seer tableaus. 

::Listen to the Dark, Riskbreaker,:: says Sydney, and it is as if he can feel his amusement, sharp and delighted. 

Suspicion growing, Ashley reaches for the Dark, and it purrs back at him. It feels contented, sated, and almost friendly. It’s not pushing at him, or washing over him until it overwhelms his senses. It’s … resting, he thinks. The relief is almost like a second orgasm. The amusement that isn’t his own, and isn’t the Dark’s, spikes. Ashley reaches for the feeling, experimenting, and he can’t be mistaking this. This feeling, this metallic-bright flavour in his mind. ::Sydney?:: he tries, tentative. 

::Ashley,:: purrs the metallic feeling. 

He looks at Sydney, naked, Ashley’s come staining his thighs, smiling that cruel and not-cruel smile. “What have you done?” he asks, not particularly concerned, even knowing what must be true, what Sydney has wrought with the Dark and his blood and his surrender. What Sydney must have known would happen when he took Ashley’s seed inside himself. 

“Bound us, my hunter,” murmurs Sydney, the cat with the cream. “Shared the Dark between us,” he says, sending magelight skittering over his raised hand. “Taken back my birthright and made sure you will live to see yours,” licking delicately at the back of one of his claws. Ashley’s blood, probably. 

Ashley has never had a hope of hiding anything from this man, so he supposes that he loses nothing by this new closeness. He has loved the deviousness of him since the first, and cannot find it in himself to object now. As well to rail at the rain for being wet. 

And the rain is, in fact, coming down outside. ::Sleep now, then,:: he says, clear in his mind for the first time since the Graylands. ::Sleep, Sydney, and tomorrow you can show me the Dark.::

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Sydney makes no effort to tell Ashley that he's working a blood rite with him, or that the result of it will be a permanent bond between them. Ashley doesn't actually mind the result or the methods at all, and would have consented given the choice, but there are definitely consent issues here. 
> 
> Ashley is also half out of his mind due to his battle with the Dark, so if you prefer to avoid the kind of consent issues that come from intoxicant related sexual situations, this fic might not be for you.


End file.
